Russia’s science and higher education ministry has dismissed the head of a prestigious genetics institute who sparked controversy by contending that humans once lived for centuries and that the shorter lives of modern humans are due to their ancestors’ sins, state news agency RIA-Novosti said Thursday.

Although the report did not give a reason for the firing of Alexander Kudryavtsev, the influential Russian Orthodox Church called it religious discrimination.

Kudryavtsev, who headed the Russian Academy of Science’s Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, made a presentation at a conference in 2023 in which he said people had lived for some 900 years prior to the era of the Biblical Flood and that “original, ancestral and personal sins” caused genetic diseases that shortened lifespans.

  • @afraid_of_zombies
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    810 months ago

    Cognitive Dissonance. I was raised very devout and I did it for years. It doesn’t confuse me, it evokes pity. I get to see people making the same fucking mistake I made and it hurts.

    I made that mistake, no one else has to. Rip the band-aid off!

    • @Stupidmanager
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      410 months ago

      yep, same, for years. you WANT it to be true, so you ignore the contradictions.

      • @afraid_of_zombies
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        210 months ago

        Of course humans are made in the image of God and get Parkinson’s disease and diabetes.